


Moribund

by whitesilverandmercury



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: AU, Ficlet, M/M, Post-Apocalyptic, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies, because WHY TF NOT, but boys be gettin hard, ex-stripper, just saying, keith demonstrating stripper moves on the counter of an abandoned diner, making out on the floor of a waffle house at the end of the world, not nsfw, or not so subtle, probably will add more now and again, shiro in a leather jacket, sly flirting, tw: mild blood/gore mention, waffle house is the place to be at the end of the world
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-05 19:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12195843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitesilverandmercury/pseuds/whitesilverandmercury
Summary: Falling in love at the end of the world, from truck stop to truck stop. // a series of ficlets, zombie AU, Keith dancing on the counter of an empty Waffle House and Shiro cooking dinner in an abandoned farmhouse, Necrotic Virus 51, an ex-stripper with a baseball bat and a guy with a scar across his face which he does not remember getting





	1. Waffle House

**Author's Note:**

> so waffle house is the place to be after the apocalypse, and this might have a prequel or a sequel at some point but right now it’s just a ramble ficlet, idk
> 
>  **tw:** zombie apocalypse so mild blood/gore mention (double tap)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who knew a stripper would be so good with a baseball bat. // Necrotic Virus 51. “The end of the world,” Shiro says. And Keith replies, “I mean, you can’t have beginnings without ends. Plus, it’s not like everything is gone. I took a shower at a truck stop twenty miles back.” Shiro still wants to apologize for how distracted he gets by Keith’s fingers, wondering what they look like on a pole and not the grip of a metal bat. “I know,” Keith whispers back. “So, you want to kiss me again?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **tw:** zombie apocalypse, so probably some mild gore/blood mention

* * *

 

Who knew a stripper would be so good with a baseball bat.

“I used to play varsity,” Keith says, sitting cross-legged on the Formica countertop of the dark Waffle House, the shadows painting him purple and blue as moonlight tries to pry through the crooked blinds on foggy windows. There is one with broken glass, on the east side of the building; the sound of the night rushes along the jagged teeth of it, but it’s not big enough to be a real concern. The wall and the linoleum will probably mold from rain falling in. That’s not their problem.

A stripper, Keith said, when they’d first met up a few weeks ago, when they’d been crashing on the floor of a three-room church in a small town called Atchison, and through light falling through stained glass they’d asked each other the usual questions lying in pews across from each other. _What’d you do before this?_ Shiro had asked. _Stripped_ , Keith had said. _Where’d you get the scar on your face?_

Shiro isn’t sure if a pre-apocalypse stripping career is something that is obvious in the way someone’s body moves, but he does know that there is something mesmerizing about the way Keith’s body moves. The flannel shirt knotted at his hips shifts as they shift. Ripped, dirt-smudged jeans follow slim legs, where the cut of a thigh muscle dimples against exposed knee. Ankle boot heels grit in the gravel and the dirt, there’s something sexy about the twist of Keith’s frame beneath his wrinkled white screen-printed T-shirt, come loose of the flannel and jumping to show tight, sun-kissed skin as he swung the metal bat smooth and it had crunched into the head of the rabid Grey that had rushed them from under the half-light in the Waffle House parking lot. Tight shoulders. Lean arms. Everything about him fluid and fierce like a wave crashing under the full moon. The way his chest rolled under his shirt as he stood over that God damned abomination – _zombie_ was hardly grave enough to describe it – and he’d just stood there, breathing hard and looking at the dead thing wide-eyed and coming back to reality with fingers curled loosely on the grip of the metal bat –  

“Varsity, huh?” Shiro asks, lounging back sideways in one of the hard, curved diner booths across from the countertop, one leg spread out with foot wagging over the floor and the other knee drawn up and propped against the table. Crinkle of his leather jacket as he lifts an elbow to the table, throws the other arm over the back of the seat. Whisper of the faded flannel shirt tied around Keith’s waist as he struggles not to still seem disturbed by the black blood and bits of rotten brain matter he’s wiping off the scuffed metal of the baseball bat. He flicks a tiny chip of bone away. Fingers with Band-Aids at the knuckles from a steam burn yesterday, careful and crawling, to keep from getting his hands dirty as he cleans the weapon with bleach and a rag from a shelf near the restaurant’s dish washing station. Shouldn’t waste his own. They say Necrotic Virus 51 is blood-borne. 

“Yeah, varsity.” Keith nods. “I got kicked off the team, though.”

Shiro raises his brows.

Keith shrugs limply, looking up at Shiro without lifting his head. Sheepish little smile that is proud in a dark, guilty way. “Got caught making out with the pitcher.”

Shiro gives a startled little laugh. “And they kicked you off?”

“No, for a fistfight.” Keith’s eyes dance as he looks away again. “It’s a longer story than that.”

The Waffle House is abandoned, like most of the town. Like most of the country this far from a major city. Like even some major cities. Bleak and quiet in a way that is not lonely, but lonesome, and there is a difference between loneliness and lonesomeness. Something peaceful like falling asleep on a quiet night. Quiet is not always a good thing now, after the end of the world.

“How long were you a stripper before all this?” Shiro asks.

“Two years,” Keith says. “ ‘Before all this,’ “ he echoes, with a little laugh. “What’s ‘all this’?”

“The end of the world,” Shiro replies.

“I mean, you can’t have beginnings without ends,” Keith says. “Plus, it’s not like _everything_ is gone. I took a shower at a truck stop twenty miles back. And the last gas station we stopped at still had cigarettes and liquor.”

Shiro smiles faintly. He’s being dramatic. He knows. They’re alive. At least they’re alive. Two relative strangers – in some ways – in other ways, not so much – but they’re alive. “True,” he says. “You know, you’re pretty chill for someone who’s been traveling alone for so long.”

Keith folds his arms around his baseball bat and leans gently with chin pressed to cold metal. He squints, past Shiro, maybe trying to look through a gap in the crooked blinds across the way, where the lights of a 7-Eleven have been flickering since they got to the empty diner.

“I bet there’s Red Bull in there,” he says.

“Water,” Shiro reminds him. “Hydration.”

“Probably has Cheetos, too.”

“How long have you been alone?”

Keith’s glance flickers over to Shiro. “My dad taught me a lot,” he answers, voice just as hesitant as his eyes. A little bit shy, a little bit embarrassed. “He was, you know, what do they call it? I wouldn’t say doomsday prepper so much as a very prepared conspiracy theorist.”

The absent smile lingers on Shiro’s mouth. His brow knots. Keith lifts his face to look at him fully now, another sheepish grin dancing fast across him like heat lightning.

“He always thought it would be the greys,” he says, and there’s a lilt of a laugh there, behind his burnt silk voice, the curve of his words through his lips like maybe he used to lisp when he was younger. “Never guessed they’d work through nuclear virus, though. Fun fact, he was convinced my mom was a star-seed.”

Shiro’s smile pinches; he tries not to laugh, because he thinks that would be very rude. He considers asking about Keith’s parents. He decides that would be even ruder. So he says, “I can teach you better form.”

Something innocent blooms on Keith’s face – makes him look young, suddenly, very young, younger than he already looks with those big owl eyes, so dark blue they’re almost violet. Dark and boundless like a night sky, observing in a way that is almost intimidating. “What, with the bat?” he murmurs.

“Yeah. I played in school, too. I was captain, actually.”

“Yeah … yeah, sure.”

Shiro’s still unsure whether a pre-apocalypse stripping career is obvious in someone’s body, but God, there is something magnetic about Keith’s body. It is supple and it is small – against his, at least – but in no way is it fragile, as Shiro stands behind him and in the center of the Waffle House, Keith holds the baseball bat and Shiro holds the baseball bat and their arms move in slow sync as Shiro guides him in cleaning up his stance and technique.  

“Back foot on the toe,” Shiro says, and their bodies move together like Shiro is Keith’s shadow stretching up against the wall.   

“You don’t want to overextend,” Shiro warns, and he can smell Keith’s skin this close, sweet and warm. He can feel the heat of it.

Keith follows the imaginary path of the swing; his wrists shift and Shiro’s shift, their arms braid together a little, and Shiro can’t help but get distracted by Keith’s fingers, wondering what they look like on a pole and not the grip of a metal bat –

Palm up, palm down, press of the toe, center line, swing through …

There’s a shuffle of feet and a brush of warm skin as Keith turns half-around, baseball bat sagging down in two sets of hands as he looks up at Shiro like he knows Shiro is flirting and says, “I can teach you some form, too.”

Scrape and clatter of the baseball bat into one of the booth seats. Keith pushes himself atop the Waffle House countertop with a tension in his forearms and a little hop. He nudges knocked-over salt shakers and clotted bottles of Tabasco and napkin dispensers out of the way with the toe of his boot. It is not a good idea, Shiro thinks, to scan the AM/FM for something salvageable for him to dance to, so he just hums a song and Keith can’t bite back a little smile, a silent laugh. He starts to sway – his body rolls, slow and sensual – his hips circle as his arms slither up, fingers catching in the hem of his T-shirt, teasing drag to show enough skin for enough time to really make a lasting impact on Shiro and the way hair stands on end at the base of his neck, the way the hum gives out for just a moment in the back of his throat. Keith’s fingertips brush up his chest, draw lines in the white cotton, float up overhead as he eases lazily down to wide knees on the counter. Still moving, seductively, still rolling his body, easy but precise. Practiced. Slow rock back against his heels, dreamy drift forward with thumbs in his belt loops – the tiny buttons of his flannel shirt tap on the counter –  

And Shiro realizes for all his owl-eyed, hard-assed grimness outside swinging a baseball bat into a rotten skull, here dancing sexy on the Waffle House counter, Keith is having _fun_.

“Show’s over,” Keith grunts after a moment, breathless, maybe for nerves or maybe for dancing. Grinning idly, he swings around to sit with legs dangling off the edge of the counter.  

Shiro clears his throat, runs a hand up through his hair and down the back of his neck. God damn. God damn, God damn. Keith just gawks at him from the counter, eyes wide and wondering in that dark, fixated way of his Shiro is coming to understand. Not necessarily desperation so much as need.

Shiro pushes himself up off the hard diner booth and moves forward, slowly. As he closes distance, Keith let his hips bump his knees out of the way, hang open wider; with another crinkle of leather, Shiro presses his palms to the Formica to either side of Keith’s legs and leans forward until they’re almost nose to nose. Just smiling. A little shaken by how much the silly show stirred him up inside. Outside. Down.

Keith is quiet. He just stares at Shiro, lips parted for a tiny breath that seems a little stuck. Waiting. Anticipating. Daring. Begging. The space between them buzzes like static electricity. Something is supposed to happen. Something is going to happen.

“That wasn’t exactly subtle,” Shiro murmurs, smile softening in apology for how much Keith turns him on for how little they’ve known each other. He feels bad.

“I know,” Keith whispers back, and there’s that careful shaping of the words, tight jaw and soft lips. “So, you want to kiss me again?”

Shiro swallows on a tight throat, raising his brows slowly. His smile pinches in respectful restraint. _Again_. Like they had in the church. In the shell of an elementary school. The last few weeks …  

“Yeah,” Shiro breathes in reply, penitent.  

Keith nods slowly and it dusts their noses together. He blinks a few times as Shiro’s hair tickles his brow and his eyes are wide and boundless like the night sky as purple and blue in the shadows, he husks back, “Will you kiss me again?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says, but he can barely get the word out before Keith presses his mouth on his and his fingers tighten in the collar of his leather jacket.

Shiro winds an arm around Keith’s body, tight; hoists him off the counter with both hands slipping to prop at the place where taut thigh meets taut ass and ripped denim pocket, fingers dragging flannel every which way. Keith clings before he can fall, mouth moving on Shiro’s hungrily, almost harder than Shiro can keep up, graze of tongue, ridge of teeth – heat of his breath, hotter heat of his hips crushed against him, the shape of –

Outside the Waffle House, a low, not-so-distant moan of emergency sirens kicks on. Slow, very slow at first, swelling, growing, until the sound hits its peak and blares for a spine-chilling few seconds before it begins its waning wail only to start all over again.

“Fuck – ” Keith gasp-grumbles, half against Shiro’s mouth.

“Don’t worry about it,” Shiro whispers back, though he is not immune to the same goosebumps, adrenaline surge urgency. Their limbs tangle like ivy as Keith wiggles to slide back down to his feet – but it’s only to follow Shiro down to the faded, dusty linoleum, get out of the sight line of the tabletops should anything come past the diner windows. The sirens wail and then they groan, and then they wail again – there’s a new wave of Greys, spotted somewhere in the city, this is the Get Inside or Prepare to Fight warning – shambling, withered and mutated things, rotting alive and ravenous –

They’ll deal with that if they have to, but right now, straddled there hunched on the diner floor, there is something more important and that is the matter of tongue and teeth and racing heart, Shiro’s hands sliding up under Keith’s shirt at the small of his back and Keith’s fingers curling in Shiro’s hair. Shiro’s fingers flirt with the waist of those ripped jeans; a breath stutters in the back of Keith’s throat and his ex-stripper’s hips rock down as he gives a shy little laugh. Shiro smiles against his mouth, always so inexplicably pleased when Keith’s face lights up. Outside, the sirens groan and they wail and they swell and they shudder. Somewhere far away, but not far enough to go unheard, there is a gunshot. And through the broken blinds, the jittery light from the 7-Eleven slips in, scatters itself along the tile and grout.

 

 


	2. Ascension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The apocalypse does not happen overnight. Neon lights still pulse over the façade of Area 69, a strip club somewhere in the greater Nashville area. This is doomsday, Dad -- a dark-haired, broad-shouldered guy fighting Greys with a metal pipe in the half-lit parking lot of a little church, sharing Cliff Bars and fruit cups in the chapel, the way Shiro's eyes make Keith blush and his voice comes across the DIY shortwave scanner. " ... fshhh ... come in, this is ... kschhh ... this is Black Lion ... " // prequel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> somewhere in between GRE studying and thesis projecting and midterms and class papers, i found this little prequel for you guys ♥ also, _drive_ by **emmit fenn** & _ascension_ **nic fanciulli remix** , ft. vince staples, they're both on spotfiy, idk
> 
>  **tw:** they're fighting zombies guys, be prepared for at least references to blood and bits

The apocalypse does not happen overnight. It’s fast, but it’s more of a voluntary collapse – Patient(s) Zero. Cities caught off guard due to media silence. Media cover-ups. Conspiracy theories. Safe zones and evacuation zones and dire lack of preparation, protection, prevention, understanding. Government withdraws. World leaders go underground. Seven months since Final Evacuation Broadcast, they’re as good as gone, which – in a lot of cases – is for the better.

And for one thing – sorry, EMP-ers – not _all_ of the electrical grid goes down. Some plants are abandoned pretty quickly, sure. But the world is not fully dark. There _is_ such a thing as solar power.

Almost two years after Patient(s) Zero, there are compounds, yes, but it is still not yet every man for himself, and neon lights still pulse over the façade of _Area 69_ , a strip club somewhere in the greater Nashville area.  

The electronic and industrial synth inside is deafening. Cigarette smoke hovers, turning colors slowly under the low lights – green, blue, purple, red. It makes it easier not to see the faces scattered around the bar, glassy-eyed and mesmerized. The proprietors told Keith they only let people in if they have an adequate amount of cash. They can’t run a business if people aren’t paying their dancers. Kind of sad, that some people are willing to use their cash at places like this. Cash isn’t rare, but it’s only so long before it becomes a hot commodity like Cosmic brownies.

There are two other men on the squat, cramped left stage with Keith. It’s a hole in the wall. No touching. Girls on one side, boys on the other. The girls share their glitter in the dressing room, which is hardly a dressing room, sparkle purple and blue at the eyes and the throat and the belly button, swirl their bodies side to side as they drag thumbs down the strings of their bikini tops. Teasing, cupping. Across the room, the men move to the beat with a different sort of erotic. The tallest of three wears a necktie with no shirt. The skinny one has fish nets, fat winged eyeliner. And Keith …

In the dressing room, the skinny one with the good eyeliner was excited to have a fresh face for the night, insistent on helping Keith with his outfit (or the lack thereof). Took one look at his T-shirt and flannel and said, _Here, put this on_. _Wait_. He ripped black tape for Keith to put in X’s over his nipples before tugging on the loose mesh sleeveless top passed his way. _Here_ , the skinny one said again, and took some of the girls’ glitter and Keith squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the cloud of sparkles to hit.

So this is it. It’s not like doing this before was _glorious_ or anything, but – this is doomsday, Dad. Dancing barefoot in a shitty little strip club outside the shell of Music City with X’s on his chest and a mesh top with ripped jeans, a rolled-up dollar stuck at his hip, another, two – oh, fuck, a twenty? Baller – and the roll of his body under the roll of cheap lights for a sad little audience of the usual types of men, drinking cheap beer, smoking cheaper cigarettes. His knife is in the secret pocket in his bag in the dressing room, and so are the keys to the Honda Scrambler out back –

“C’mere, Daddy!” the skinny dancer with the good wings calls through the beat of the music, waving at a man who’s just stepped in looking a little confused and a little ashamed. Keith can barely make him out through the shivering dimness, but he is a silhouette of strong shoulders, leather jacket and a military issue duffel bag, belted strap cutting across a firm, broad chest. Light swivels over his face, catches the white shock of his hair over the brow, his dark eyes.   

Keith feels the dead-eyed mindlessness of dancing sharpen back into real life again as he slows like time itself is winding down. He just sort of stands there, swaying a little, fingers dusting the pole.

There’s something about the guy that seems a little off. He doesn’t belong here. He knows he doesn’t. But then he also looks like he might not know he doesn’t. He looks worried – lost, maybe. Needs directions –

A wadded-up napkin bounces off Keith’s chest. He rips his eyes back to the few faces down at the stage bar, appalled. Two of the men there are laughing. One shouts a demand. Something like, “Keep dancing!” Gritting his teeth, Keith kicks the napkin back off the stage. It hits the guy’s drink, bounces into his lap. His face twists – offended, embarrassed. Kneejerk machismo.

“You like that, _baby?_ ” Keith snarls, the taste of fury chalky on his tongue.

Speechless, the man’s face goes empty; his mouth hangs open. Fuck. The place advertises as weapon-free – Keith checked – but that doesn’t guarantee anything. Surely the redneck’s got a gun on him somewhere.

In the swirl of lights, as the song turns over and sets Keith’s ears ringing again, the man pulls out his wallet and digs frantically for more cash. His eyes dance as he reaches, waves for Keith. Flustered, feeling the heat of the manager’s eyes, Keith drops down to his haunches as sensually as he can, takes the money and slides it suggestively down his stomach, into his pants above the fly.

The guy at the door is gone.

* * *

The candy of a lollipop clicks on his back teeth as Keith sits straddled on his bike miles down Briley Parkway, counting cash from the night. Overhead, the sky is clear and clean of light pollution, pinpricks of stars peeking through velvety cobalt. The sound of the night around the parkway is smooth and susurrating, beyond the rushing stream of static on the home-tinkered shortwave scanner propped on the seat between his thighs. Little blips here and there, distant chatter. Forty-five bucks tonight. Nothing like how things used to be, but nothing is how it used to be –

“ … _fshhh_ … _ack Lion_ … _if anyone can hear this_ … _kschhh_ … _This is Black Lion_ … ”

The lollipop bruises Keith’s cheek as his teeth tighten around it, eyes bouncing up wide and wild.

“ … _out of ammo, wedding chapel off, uhh – Atrium Way – Nashville_ … _fshhhh_ … _Repeat, this is_ – ”

 _Black Lion_.

Keith’s heart gives a little lurch, and he isn’t sure whether it leaps or falls. His dad always said there was no such thing as coincidence. This is not the first time he’s picked up a transmission from Black Lion. But it’s the first time he’s heard the fuzzy voice sound – _worried_.

Keith shoves the cash in the breast pocket of his jacket and swings his bag around to his lap, to find that map he’d picked up at some dark Exxon back in the suburbs. The place had otherwise been picked clean; but people are stupid, he’s not sure why no one grabs maps. In the pierce of a palm-sized flashlight, his eyes scan the wrinkled pages. Atrium Way. Atrium Way. Off Elm Hill Pike. He checks the mile marker on the parkway; he checks the compass on his wrist, put in the place of a ripped-off watch face. Atrium Way not far. Not far at all.

The sound of the Scrambler’s engine revving rips through the star-speckled quiet.

So does the sound of it sputtering ten minutes later, in the ripple of moonlight through shivering trees. And the garbled, tattered chorus of what sounds like a moderate pack of hungry Greys, as the coast in empty gas tank neutral finally slows enough for Keith to drag his toes on the ground.  

A hollow _tang_ sings through the quiet, down below the parkway, like the sound of something metal hitting something else – _hard_. A voice follows. A man. Impatient, but not struggling. Something like, “You want some _more_ – ?”

Keith props the Scrambler against the concrete wall of the parkway, slips his baseball bat out from its place snug against his back, and peeks over the edge.

 _The Wedding Chapel_ , the sign out front a little white church says. There are Greys in the tiny parking lot, and a guy in a leather jacket taking them down with a metal pipe. God, the sounds the Greys make are awful. They look like radiation sickness, hairless and necrotic; the mutations of Virus 51 make the skin shred itself like candle wax. Eyes black-bloodshot and goopy, tongues lolling around foam and broken teeth –

 _CRACK!_ With a tinny echo, the guy in the parking lot misses the cranium of a little Grey but knocks the deteriorating jaw askew with enough force to take it to the ground. He slams a foot to the thing’s throat and as it flails for his leg, he snaps its neck with a quick, masterful shove of the heel.

A shiver snakes down Keith’s spine and heat sparks in his cheeks. He’s kind of a sucker for good fighters.  

“Hey!” he calls down to the guy. “Were you on the radio a little bit ago?”

The guy looks up, panting lightly but in a careful way like this is nothing new to him. Inconvenient, but not unexpected. Broad shoulders, strong hands. Dark, intent eyes. That cowlick of white at the widow’s peak. The shiver in Keith’s spine tightens up.

“Yeah!” the guy calls back, eyes jumping to a Grey with its sights set on him.

“You need some help?” Keith shouts.

“Yeah!” The guy laughs a little at that. The sound is velvety, and infectious. “If you don’t mind!” He stops the Grey with a perfectly aimed side kick, flips the pipe in his hands with a flick of the wrists, and plunges it down so hard, it pierces the Grey’s fragile throat like pinning a butterfly behind glass.

* * *

“So, you traveling alone?” Shiro asks around a chunk of blueberry Cliff Bar.

Keith nods, running his knuckle quick through his lips to catch a tiny sticky bead of juice from the fruit cup Shiro had offered as thanks for the help, after introducing himself and giving Keith a quizzical look until Keith realized how obviously he was staring at him.

“What about you?” Keith asks.

“I think so, yes.” Shiro shrugs, swinging his feet up to prop on the pew ahead of them, where they sit in the nave in the cool, quiet dark. A few candles burn up near the podium for some light, shadows shivering. “Right now, yes. But there are others I was with before.”

“Where are they?”

Shiro smiles faintly, up at the hanging cross. “I don’t know,” he says, flat and gentle. The stench from burning the Greys’ bodies lingers, creeps in through the windows and walls of the church.

“Are you scared of them?” Shiro asks, voice soft. Burnt velvet. _Them_. The Greys. _When the greys come_ , his dad had always said, _you tell them your mother was a star-seed_. And _Yes, dad_ , Keith had replied. _Whatever, Dad_. Spoonful of Fruit Loops and running late to school. Again. And the greys had come, yes, but they’d made _these_ Greys and resigned to watch the havoc. For the time being –

“No.” Keith holds the plastic spork out for Shiro to take a turn on the fruit cup; Shiro passes over the Cliff Bar. “Honestly, I’m more bothered by clowns.”

“ _Really_.” There is the lilt of a stifled laugh behind the word, a dimple that pinches Shiro’s smile and makes him look so much younger than the sexy cut of his jaw.

Keith smiles stupidly, keenly aware of how flustered the guy’s eyes make him. “Yeah.”    

There’s a small silence. A comfortable one, the silence of strangers who share the same exhaustion and the same understanding that either one has the capacity to seriously injure the other. Little sighs and stretching arms, rustling around to make a pillow out of a traveling bag or gather trash from the midnight snack, try to locate a trash can somewhere in the building.

“Thanks again,” Shiro says once they’ve both settled down to sleep in pews across from each other.

“It’s cool,” Keith murmurs, tilting his head back on his bag to look at Shiro upside down from his pew. The guy should feel dangerous. He is big, and he is strong, and he has a scar across his face. But really, for all his dark-haired, dark-eyed Adonis factor and the way he can take down four Greys by himself, there is something sort of uncomplicated feeling about Shiro. Straightforward. _Kind_. Not necessarily naïve so much as hopeful. Consciously subdued … so maybe not harmless.

“What’d you do before this?” Shiro asks. Maybe obligatory. Maybe slightly, honestly curious. Keith is sure as hell curious about him, but he’s too flustered by his smiles to ask. _Before this_.

“Stripped,” Keith says. He can feel Shiro looking at him. There is a series of looks he might be giving. Surprise. Judgment. Pity. Confusion –

“I thought I recognized you,” Shiro murmurs.

“What, from the club earlier?” Keith clears his throat, pulls off his flannel to wad up for more cushioning against his travel bag pillow. “Yeah, I recognized you, too.”

“But you say you _used_ to dance, or … ?”

 _Dance_. So respectful. “Used to,” Keith confirms. “But a guy’s gotta make _some_ cash somehow, right?” He settles down and peeks at Shiro from behind the arm of the pew, nestled into his bag. “Where’d you get that scar on your face?” he asks.

Shiro’s dark eyes flicker over to him and Keith sinks lower into the pew, feeling like he is very, very obvious in the way he’s casually admiring the guy. He can’t help it. It might be because there’s something about Shiro that feels inherently safe. Or because there is no such thing as coincidence. _Black Lion_. Or maybe it’s just as simple as he has the hots for him and sometimes he _does_ appreciate company.

Shiro’s face darkens a little – or maybe he just turns away from the last of the candlelight. He smiles the ghost of a smile, with small but obvious effort. “My scar?” he husks. “I don’t know.”

This seems like a lie. Keith isn’t about to press. 

“Do you have enough gas left to put in a bike?” Keith mumbles. 

“Probably,” Shiro replies.

“If you put some in my bike, you can ride with me _quid pro quo_. For a little while. Or until you find your friends. I don’t care.” 

This smile is real as it unfolds across Shiro’s face, dimples it again in a way that makes Keith very happy to see – because he compelled it, he is responsible for it.

“Sounds good,” Shiro says, warmly. “ _Quid pro quo_.”


	3. Birthdays at the End of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Birthdays at the end of the world are not really any different from birthdays before the end of the world. Lucky for them, the old couple who owned the farmhouse has been dead for a while. Also lucky for them, there was enough unexpired food in the bomb shelter for a good dinner, and bourbon has a relatively long shelf life, too. There is an antique record player in the oak-paneled living room. It still plays. So they slow dance. "Happy birthday," Shiro says. And "I want this," Keith whispers. And Shiro can't tell if it's the cuddling he wants, or the playing house, but whatever it is, the words feel an awful lot like, "I love you." // a day late but happy birthday, keith!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, listen to **lord huron** | _the night we met_ , also this a bit **nsfw**
> 
> **tw:** zombie AU, expect mentions of gore; this chapter references the burning of corpses

Lucky for them, the old couple who owned the farmhouse has been dead for a while. They also fell outside, in the yard, so the house doesn’t smell like putrefaction, and there are no body stains on the moss green living room carpet.  

“This is really sad,” Keith murmurs, hunched into his parka coat with fingers tucked against his sides for warmth, slouching there halfway between the crooked porch and the pseudo-funeral pyre Shiro’s building. A weathervane planted off by the shed creaks and whines in the evening wind. The October air has teeth to it, up here in the Pacific Northwest. Bites into the fingers, stings the nose. Makes it impossible to tell how long ago the old couple died.

“What do you mean?” Shiro asks, pausing, on his haunches, elbows propped on knees and gas can dangling from loose fingers.

Keith shrugs. “They died together.”

Shiro frowns, eyes roaming the weathered, half-gone remains of the lovely old husband and wife. In the pictures in the house, on the walls, end tables, bookshelves, they look so very happy. They were someone’s parents. Someone’s grandparents. Someone’s brother and sister and children …

“Yeah,” Shiro murmurs back.

“They died fighting,” Keith says. “For nothing.”

A dry little smile perks at Shiro’s mouth. Cynical, very Keith.

The old couple had been prepared, that’s for sure. Shiro’s eyes lower; his mouth presses in a firm line. The old man’s fingers had crumbled away from an empty shotgun, God knows how long ago. There is a hand axe nearby. It is difficult to gauge how much damage has been done to their leathery, skeletonizing remains by wind and rain and wild animals versus the Greys that inevitably took them down.

“Yeah,” Shiro says again.

Keith’s breathing picks up. Shiro can hear it, picking up. He looks over without lifting his face, a secret and respectful little glance –

Keith's breath falls in fragile little clouds; his brow is knotted over eyes deep indigo, dark and stormy. Glinting not with moonlight but with a pain he will never put words to. He doesn’t have to. Shiro knows him too well for him to hide anything. Eyes sharp and full of a cold, defenseless hatred. For what, Shiro doesn’t know. But it is there, deep down in the kid. (Because once a guy hits twenty-six, like Shiro, everyone twenty-one and under is still a kid.)

Shiro stands with a pop of his knees for the cold weather and sets the gas can down far enough away. He wanders back over to the little funeral pyre, onto which he moved the bodies, or what’s left of them. He strikes the match and just as he drops it on the pyre and the flames chase the gasoline over the old corpses, Keith turns hard on his heel and walks back up the creaking porch, throws open the crooked screen door and disappears inside the farmhouse.

* * *

Lucky for them, there is still some food in the farmhouse, prepped and frozen or blessed by a long shelf life down in the bunker. In the light of an oil lamp with round frosted glass, which all old farmhouse couples seem to have in abundance, they cook dinner on a gas stove lit by long matches. Defrosted potatoes, sautéed with rosemary. The frozen asparagus gets a little soggy in the reheating. But the old couple dated all the meat they froze, and apricot preserves on chicken isn’t bad.

It is deathly quiet out here. The night swallows up the farmhouse in a strange, hollow way. Nothing but the creak of scuffed wooden chairs at a tiny wobbling dining table, which, of course, has a yellowed doily across the center of it, white lace with which Keith fiddles between two fingers as he eats. Scrape of fork on china, bounce of his knee under the table.

He doesn’t really want to eat. He’s not hungry. He tries, anyway, because watching Shiro cook is one of those things that makes him fall head over heels all over again. The way he rolls his sleeves up, pokes at vegetables with old tongs with one hand while he tosses potatoes in a cast-iron skillet with the other, muscles of his forearm flexing under his skin. All that’s missing is an apron; he even hums under his breath. Funny, the way such a tall, broad, seemingly hardened guy with a scar across his face can be so comfortably domesticated. But that's the thing about Shiro. He is dangerous in the most dangerous of ways, and that is that Keith forgets it so often. 

Another stroke of luck, the shelf life of bourbon is remarkably good, too.

With a _clink_ of glass on glass, Shiro refills a tumbler from the cabinet over the sink. The ceramic backsplash along the countertop needs cleaning; it’s grimy and dark. The whole house feels like a weekend with grandma and grandpa, except grandma and grandpa will never be home again. The whine of the wind outside, the crackle of the oil lamp and dance of the shadows across the white and blue kitchen. Dead flowers, crumbling out of a vase. Cobwebs across Precious Moments figurines. Worth a fortune of a fortune now. Pretty sure there is a mouse squeaking somewhere in the walls.

Shiro leans back in his dining chair with a gentle creaking and washes down the last of his dinner with the last of his liquor. He sets down the glass, folds his arms along his broad chest and just slouches there, smiling idly across the table at Keith. Keith stares back, prodding at potatoes gone cold. He knows that smile. It’s disappointed and frustrated, but politely so. Sadly so. Protectively so.

“It’s your birthday,” Shiro says, voice cutting through the empty house silence smooth and even.  

Keith shrugs. “Yeah,” he mumbles, and gives Shiro a dour glance without lifting his head as he sticks a thumb in his mouth to try to get a string of asparagus out from the place right against a canine tooth. His frown may have counted as a pout, had he been a cuter person, he thinks. Shiro hates when he says things like that.

Shiro’s smile softens a little. “Well, what do you want?”

“What do you mean, what do I want?” Keith wipes his thumb off on his jeans.

“For your birthday.”

“Shiro … ”

“Birthdays at the end of the world shouldn’t be any different from birthdays before the end of the world.”

“You’re right,” Keith snaps. “And they aren’t. Not at all. They’re still disappointing.”

Trix cereal and a cup of old coffee for breakfast before biking to Lynnewood High in time for first bell, and a note on the fridge, Sharpie marker, words in scribbled all-caps like fathers do, hanging there under a Roswell magnet. _I’ll be back by Christmas – Dad_.

“And depressing,” Keith mutters.

That kid Lance in fifth grade, best of the elementary school soccer team, could speak Spanish, or something like it, kids from class who Keith doesn’t talk to and who don’t talk to him screaming and laughing and leaping from the trampoline into the pool with big splashes, and Lance's mom and his older sisters bringing out trays and trays of cupcakes decorated with sour gummy worms singing Happy Birthday and Lance with his ridiculous pool goggles, chambering a huge water gun, and _When’s your birthday party?_ and _I don’t have birthday parties_.

“Existential,” Keith says through his teeth.

Camping in the mountains of Colorado, sitting in the open flap of a tent with rain dripping off the zipper onto his hiking boots, ends of his hoodie sleeves damp from fingers wet and brittle like October icicles. Loosely hugging a shotgun, propped against his shoulder, watching the pass down below for any sign of movement that might signal his dad’s return to say, _You didn’t hide your tracks well enough, I found you in twenty minutes_. But the pass was so beautiful, foggy and stark in the rain, shivering trees climbing the mountainside, and the absence of sound – of human sound – of anything – an anonymity out here where the bears and the deer did not care that he was sixteen today and that was both terrifying and relieving –

“And lonely,” Keith finishes, voice thick.

A shadow eclipses Shiro’s face. It’s one of those moments where he seems an utter mystery to Keith, territory there in the wood of his soul that is dangerous and untraversed.

“Not like I’m _alone_ ,” he hurries to explain, laying down his fork with a clatter against the china. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean – it’s just – it’s just another fucking day, and it’s not important. It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, you’re one of those anti-birthday people?” Shiro raises his brows, a little sarcastically. A little bit as if to say, _Please tell me you’re not one of those anti-birthday people_.

Keith raises his brows right back, sassy, dropping his free hand to the table with a gentle thud. “Are you fucking kidding me?” he sputters. “Shiro, we had to burn the bodies of the people who lived in this house before we got here.” He is embarrassed by how viciously the words tear out of him. Appalled, accusatory. Broken. The bodies, and the fire. A husband and wife. Died fighting together. They at least gave them a proper finish. Died together, burned together. Together. It could be them one day. It is anyone. They are all moribund. Life confronted by death at every turn.

Shiro’s done. Mouth in a firm line and dark eyes veering away, he scoots out from the dining table with a scrape of the chair legs on faded gray linoleum. He stands, and stalks into the living room, around the corner and out of sight.

Miserably, Keith glares at his food, with his hands in his lap and his toes pressed to the floor. Great. They’re fighting again. It’s not his fault, though. They just process tragedy differently and it’s not like Keith always reacts this way when they have to burn bodies. It’s just that – this is someone’s home, and they are playing house in it – while bones are charred and broken up out there in the yard … There is a pinch in his chest that is only digging deeper, deeper yet, twisting –

Out in the dark living room, more furniture scrapes around. There’s a clicking, a cranking. Fumbling with something. Scratch of vinyl.

Music.

“ … _I am not the only traveler_ … ”

Keith looks up with knotted brow, lips parted for a breath that just sort of gets caught there between his lips.

“ … _who has not repaid his debt_ … ”

With a crack of the old floorboards beneath him, Shiro steps back into the kitchen and gets the lamp. He raises his brows at Keith again; the only shadow on his face now is the dance of the warm light. Bruised smile, blue-gray Henley under faded flannel shirt and finger-combed hair.  

“What is that?” Keith whispers.

“They’ve got an old hand-crank record player,” Shiro whispers back.

“Those things are ancient.”

“It still works.”

“I hear that.”

The living room isn’t bad. Walls in oak paneling, an ugly moss green carpet and molding layered in dust. There is definitely something living in the walls, something rustling and squeaking. It’d be nice to get a fire going under the brick mantle, because there’s no electricity and it’s October in the Pacific Northwest, but that would feel too cruel. This is not their house. The floor creaks everywhere, apparently, under Shiro as he steps forward and winds Keith in against him like the little place between ribs and waist was made to hold his arm.

His other hand catches Keith’s; his steps weave in time. And by the time Keith realizes what is happening, flustered and blushing, they are already slow dancing.

“ … _take me back to the night we met_ … ”

The music sways on, needle hopping on the dusty record. It jumps and it shivers a little, pops here and there. Soft, and lamenting, an oldie but goodie. _Don’t know what I’m supposed to do, haunted by the ghost of you_ … And Shiro’s arm is strong and warm around him, and his hand for being so good at killing things cradles Keith’s fingers so tenderly. Slow dancing has never been in Keith’s bulletin. So he just sort of follows along, heart stuck in his throat. Face hot and chest tightening. It’s been a year, just about, since _Quid pro quo_ and the wedding chapel in Nashville. He shouldn’t still get this flustered and heart-achey around the guy. But he can’t help it. God damn, he just … can’t help it.  

Keith wiggles closer. He leans. He smashes his face up against Shiro’s chest, near his shoulder, and falls into the rhythm as they turn in languid, shuffling steps.   

“ … _when the night was full of terrors_ … _and your eyes were filled with tears_ … ”

Shiro’s heart flutters under his cheek. It’s embarrassing how much it means to Keith to feel the smooth, firm shape of his body, to catch his scent, to feel his warmth, his _aliveness_.  

At the small of his back, Shiro’s fingers drift. The arms which they hold out together, hand in hand, slowly sag down until they hover idly at their hips, fingers threading, weaving. Just holding and swaying together in an unhurried, barely-there circle – Shiro, leading with absentminded steps; Keith, folded against his chest just following along.

“ … _when you had not touched me yet_ … _Oh,_ _take me back to the night we met_ … ”

* * *

There is something about Keith’s kisses that beg, _Just crush me_. And when he is cleaving to Shiro from below, Shiro fears there is a part of him that really could.

Crush him.

Keith is not a fragile person; there is no weakness in the way he gives up at Shiro’s touch. He just crumbles. Yields without hesitation like he’s been waiting for someone to which he wants to yield. Waiting for someone to crush him. He’d led Shiro upstairs with a slack hold of the hand, up the steep, narrow staircase. Past more wall hangings – family pictures – a print of a painting of Jesus – shelves of knickknacks and hand-stitched quotes.

The old couple’s bedroom is quiet like a tomb, stale and lonesome. The guest room is the same, but without the ghost of former presence. Like cold is the absence of heat; like a father is the absence of a mother. There is a lone double bed with a tarnished metal frame, the kind with knobs crowning each post. The mattress squeaks as Shiro follows Keith down to it – Keith pulls him down to it with him – press of the knee and an open palm to the cold old quilt as dull moonlight filters in through threadbare curtains.

Shiro’s hand moves down Keith’s chest for his fingers to slide into the top of his jeans and tease there, running along between denim and warm skin. Keith’s eyes burn into him – sear their shapes on Shiro’s skin like the way his mouth sears its shape onto his mouth. Gentle shift and graze of teeth, the hot life that hides behind cool lips. 

“Ah … ”

His back arches when Shiro’s fingers crawl like spiders up under his shirt. His nipples are already tight from the desire that rushes through him hot and molten. Shiro knows this, because he is terrible at hiding it. In another man, it’d be lust. Shiro isn’t quite sure Keith is capable of lust more than he is capable of reckless passion or driven fixation.

Keith’s shuddering little sigh breaks into a startled breath; his body curls in on itself briefly and he flashes Shiro a glance like lightning, laughter flickering across his flushed face. “Fuck, your fingers are cold,” he sputters. 

Yes, cold fingers on fever-hot skin, and fuck if it doesn’t turn Shiro on in the most mindless way to feel Keith getting hard below his moving hand as the heels of his Converse dig into the old quilt, the whining mattress. The kisses deepen. Keith’s nails bite Shiro’s skin as Shiro’s nails scrape against the denim of Keith’s pants to get them down lower. They have to pause to remove shoes before continuing. Keith grins, eyes hooded and heated. And Shiro drags him back for a crash of a kiss.  

At the end of the world, no one seems to care about condoms anymore, which seems irresponsible, but it’s lucky for them. It means less difficulty finding an abandoned gas station or supermarket where a guy can replenish stock on protection – sometimes even K-Y. Whatever is available, really.

Keith tries to swallow his own moans, stifle sounds of pleasure even though they’re alone. He always does this. Shiro finds it both sexy and frustrating, but sometimes he can coax the groans out. Usually around the third finger, after two others taken with stuttering little breathless grunts. Shiro can’t figure out if it’s a test or just self-consciousness. _Crush me_. He could. He really could. God, Shiro loves him for all his darkness.

Maybe Keith loves him for his, too.

“ _Fuuuck_ ,” Keith hisses through his teeth, when Shiro’s easing in and his body is hot and braced, pressed into the mattress. Shiro can feel the tension in Keith’s muscles where he grips the most delicious part of his taut thigh for leverage, elbow hooked on his knee to hold him in place. They do not go this far very often, but slow dancing calls for it. Birthday dinner calls for it. The look in Keith’s eyes downstairs in the living room when the song had stopped had pleaded for it.

At the end of the world, a man can finally understand the concept of lovemaking.

As always, it takes a good, gentle few minutes before the hips can really start rocking. They hit the right angle and again Keith chokes out, “ _Fuck_ – ” and he tries to drag Shiro closer, closer, Shiro is worried the open fly of his jeans will hurt naked skin but Keith doesn’t seem to care, and the warm, familiar smell of his skin is intoxicating, especially when Shiro shoves his face in that one sweet spot behind his ear, and Keith digs his heels into the bed harder to keep from bouncing as he arches into the motion, and so Shiro crushes him slow but deep, crushes him like Sappho’s hyacinth in the mountains, under the feet of shepherds, crushes him with the mortar and pestle of his hips –   

It starts to rain outside. A lazy, unimportant sort of rain, whispering at the windowpanes.

The delicious exhaustion of coming down from an orgasm still tingles in Shiro’s muscles. Keith’s body rises and falls, evenly, under his arm, which keeps him tucked up close in an inconsequential spoon, the both of them lying on their sides facing the window sluggish and satisfied.

“Are you asleep?” Shiro whispers against the back of Keith’s head.

“Yes,” Keith whispers back.

Shiro smiles faintly into his hair, arm tightening.

“I want this,” Keith murmurs, and it is somehow so much quieter than his whisper that Shiro lifts his head a bit to try to hear. 

“What?” he says.

Keith traces the shape of Shiro’s knuckles with one or two tickling, drowsy fingers. “This.”

 _This_. The cuddling, perhaps. _This_. Their closeness. _This_. Playing house. Or maybe he means – an almost off the grid sort of place, self-sustainable, surrounded by deep green fir trees and the occasional neighbor, a tool shed, a chicken coop, a crooked front porch to smoke cigarettes on, a kitchen in which to eat together, a living room for slow dancing and a bedroom in which to make love, a window through which to watch midnight rain.

“Happy birthday,” Shiro murmurs along the shell of Keith’s ear. Keith’s shoulders bunch up; he shivers, and scoffs and pouts and tries to nudge Shiro away for tickling him. But Shiro doesn’t have to see his face to know the sweet, defenseless smile that flickers across it.  

Playing house is bittersweet torture to him. Shiro can tell. He understands the dull longing, the wondering what it might be like to live a normal life again.

But playing house is all Shiro can give him for now, and he thinks that’s a pretty good birthday for the end of the world.

“Thank you,” Keith whispers against the back of Shiro’s hand, pulling it up to run his knuckles along his lower lip like a child who never quite outgrew sucking their thumb. _Thank you_ , he says, and the shape of the words feels an awful lot like, _I love you_.


End file.
